Erik Matsunaga
@erikmatsuErik Matsunaga’s investigations into the history of Chicago’s Japanese American community have been featured by the Japanese American National Museum, Alphawood Gallery, WBEZ Radio, and the Newberry Library. Born in Chicago, a descendant of WWII-era Nikkei resettlers from California, he curates @windycitynikkei—“Bite-sized Glimpses of Japanese American Chicago”—on Instagram.
Updated November 2020
Stories from This Author
Something About My Great-Grandmother
Aug. 15, 2016 • Erik Matsunaga
Born in 1896, in 1919 my great‐grandmother Sueno Matsunaga (née Motoshima) of Shimomashiki‐gun, Kumamoto prefecture, Japan, immigrated to the U.S. as a picture bride, speaking no English and having never met her new husband. She joined Gunta Matsunaga, who had immigrated in 1906 from nearby Yatsushiro‐gun, Kumamoto prefecture, in farming a grape vineyard in Del Rey, CA, roughly fifteen miles southeast of Fresno. My Nisei grandfather was born in 1920, the first of four sons. Upon the sudden passing of …
Japanese Americans on Chicago’s South Side - Oakland/Kenwood 1940s-1950s - Part 3
Dec. 3, 2015 • Erik Matsunaga
Read Part 2 >> When my husband and I were first married, we lived in a building on the 4300 block of North Kenmore owned by Harry and Martha Tanaka. By the time I was pregnant with our first child, we had moved to a drafty second-floor apartment in the Matsunaga building on South Oakenwald. That winter was so cold that all my houseplants froze. On exceptionally cold days, I would linger at the nearby Walgreens, where elderly ladies from …
Japanese Americans on Chicago’s South Side - Oakland/Kenwood 1940s-1950s - Part 2
Dec. 2, 2015 • Erik Matsunaga
Read Part 1 >> Dad was a Kibei, born in Hawaii, came to the States to teach Japanese. He was put into Tule Lake War Relocation Center. When the Camps began releasing prisoners he chose Chicago as he heard there were job opportunities. Mom and Dad met while in Camp. She followed Dad to Chicago. Mom’s parents and siblings followed Mom to Chicago; they were originally from Tacoma, WA. Mom and Dad lived with the Kushida Family in their boarding …
Japanese Americans on Chicago’s South Side - Oakland/Kenwood 1940s-1950s - Part 1
Dec. 1, 2015 • Erik Matsunaga
Fred Yamaguchi: That was like Japantown. 43rd and Ellis.Karen Kanemoto: But now, I don’t think there are any Japanese Americans down there.Yamaguchi: I don’t think so.Kanemoto: It’s kind of like a lost history, and I think it’s important to document it. —Excerpt from an interview of Fred Yamaguchi by Karen Kanemoto As a result of Executive Order 9066, in 1942 some 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry—two-thirds of whom were American citizens by birth—were forcibly removed from their homes on the …
Saying Goodbye
March 13, 2015 • Erik Matsunaga
Gaining early educational release from incarceration at Gila River War Relocation Center in 1943, my Nisei grandparents moved to St. Paul, MN, where my grandfather enrolled in welding school. With a certified trade and some experience under his belt, in 1945 they moved—along with my infant father—to Chicago for its wealth of industrial opportunities. Initially renting a room in the recently-formed Japanese district at Clark and Division from another Matsunaga family they’d priorly known from the West Coast, they found …
30 Years of Lakeview: Chicago’s Japanese American Community 1960s-1990s - Part 2
Dec. 24, 2014 • Erik Matsunaga
Read Part 1 >> “Growing up in Lakeview during the 1960s, where there were so many Japanese American relocatees, provided a unique childhood experience. Because there were so many families that knew each other in some way or another, there was a sense of safety in that there was always someone, some neighbor or friend of the family, who lived nearby. Like many Nisei, my father had a business in the neighborhood and knew many Issei and Nisei, including the owners …
30 Years of Lakeview: Chicago’s Japanese American Community 1960s-1990s - Part 1
Dec. 23, 2014 • Erik Matsunaga
During and immediately following World War II, Americans of Japanese ancestry flooded Chicago for work and school as they were either released from incarceration at one of ten U.S. War Relocation Authority concentration camps, or discharged from military service. Prior to WWII, Chicago’s ethnic Japanese population numbered roughly four hundred; by 1945 there were twenty-thousand. Instructed by the government to not congregate back into the “Japantowns” they’d left behind, programs were instituted to assist relocatees in assimilating to the greater …
2014 Chicago Nikkei Community Annual Memorial Day Commemoration
June 3, 2014 • Erik Matsunaga
In 1935, the Japanese Mutual Aid Society of Chicago began purchasing burial plots at Montrose Cemetery on the city’s North Side. Due to discrimination of the day, Montrose was one of few cemeteries in the area that would inter the remains of deceased persons of Japanese ancestry. In 1937 the Mutual Aid Society erected a Japanese Mausoleum and in 1938 began hosting an annual Memorial Day commemoration. The majority of Japanese Americans in the Chicago area today are descendants of …
One Heart Beating to the Drums of Many—A work of fiction
May 27, 2014 • Erik Matsunaga
“I don’t make it through this side of town too often, these days.” “When’s the last time you were down here?” I asked. “Man, it’s been years. I know Tak been tellin’ ya how we went to elementary school together down there at Maryknoll, but we was both from the Westside, and I still live out that way. It’s a straight hike to come down to Li’l Tokyo! Man, it’s kind of a ghost town compared to how I remember it.” Dean …
Dr. Joe Takehara and Chicago Aikido
April 17, 2014 • Erik Matsunaga
Dr. Joe Takehara, D.D.S., a second generation Japanese American, has trained with the legends of aikido during his fifty-three years of studying the Japanese martial art. Meanwhile, he was a married father of three and built a successful dental practice from which he retired at the age of eighty. Despite being the most senior aikido practitioner in the Midwestern United States, his fifty-three year journey has gone relatively unrecorded. Aikido, a modern Japanese martial art developed by Morihei Ueshiba (1883-1969) …
